No Hax/Luck Metagame Concept

Everyone hates hax! Well, perhaps not everyone, but I do think full paralysis is really only interesting to one battler at a time.

So, I think at least many would agree that hax/luck in a competitive metagame is undesirable and unfortunate. But, what can you do without simply creating a different game that just isn’t Pokemon? I don’t pretend to know. However, I’ve been thinking about how one would completely remove hax from Pokemon, and this is what I’ve come up with. I’m sharing it here in the hopes that people will read it and comment and suggest improvements and perhaps we can all have an interesting theoretical discussion! And who knows, maybe one day a brave/bored soul will figure out a way to implement it in Pokemon Showdown :)

Haxfreemons!​

Critical Hits

I think these might be the most hated form of hax. Crits as a mechanic are still present. They still do double damage and ignore unfavourable stat modifications etc. However, regular moves no longer have an innate 6.25% chance to crit. Moves will 100% crit chance, like Frost Breath, retain that. But there aren't many of those. So, moves with a “high critical hit chance” will now always crit, but have had their base damage reduced to compensate. For example, Thunderbolt will never crit, and Leaf Blade will always crit but it’s base damage has been reduced from 90 to 50. (Its average damage before, with a base power of 90 and a 12.5% chance to crit, was 101.25. Its effective power now is very close to that: 100.)

Secondary Effects​

Moves with secondary effects that have a non-100% chance of occuring (e.g. Thunderbolt paralyzing) have had their secondary effects removed.​

Status Conditions

Burn, Poison, and Toxic Poison remain unchanged. Paralysis now only reduces speed by ¾ (no more chance for full paralysis) becoming just a severe pesistant speed decrease. Sleep now always lasts 2 turns (the average). Frozen is removed from the game since no moves reliably cause it anyway. Confusion now always lasts three turns and its effect is different: the confused Pokemon will always both successfully attack and hurt itself in confusion. Since it can be removed on switch out, maybe four turns would be more appropriate. Flinch is removed (except from Fake Out). Infatuation now makes Pokemon do half damage to Pokemon they are infatuated with instead of failing 50% of the time.

Move Accuracy

It goes without saying that moves, abilities, or items that effect accuracy or evasion are banned. Further, all moves with an accuracy of 90% or higher are boosted to 100%. This is because, I think, when deciding to give Pokemon these moves, or to use them in battle, their accuracy is usually disregarded. (Missing with Toxic feels like unfair bad luck rather than the unfortunate result of a choice). Moves with an 85% accuracy or lower typically create a choice (E.g. Should I use Fire Blast or Flamethrower?), so all of these other moves have been removed from the game, except the special cases listed at the end, forcing the “hax-free” choice to be used.

Random damage

Rather than multiplying the final damage of an attack by a random number between 0.85 and 1.00, damage should simply always be multiplied by 0.925. Now Move X used by Pokemon Y on Pokemon Z on turn 1 will do the same damage on turn 2 and 3 etc.

Other Changes

Supersonic, Sweet Kiss, Glare, and Will-O-Wisp now have 100% accuracy. Thunder and Blizzard now have 100% accuracy but will fail if it is not raining or hailing respectively. Zap Cannon and Inferno have 100% accuracy but 60 and 50 power respectively. Sacred Fire has a 100% chance to burn but 50 power.

With the new status mechanics, it might be reasonable and interesting to make Static or Cute Charm always work on contact rather than removing them completely.

Final Notes

There are many abilities that have either become meaningless (e.g. Serene Grace, Super Luck) or clearly don’t belong in the “hax-free” metagame (e.g. Tangled Feet) and I haven't written out a full list but I think their removal speaks for itself.

The only thing I couldn’t figure out how to fix is the situation when both battling pokemon have the same speed stat. Maybe the lighter or smaller pokemon goes first? Suggestions appreciated! Perhaps everyone could deal with this last remnant of hax. I think I've covered everything else, and this would theoretically be a luck-free game! But if I've missed something, please post it!

PS: Yes, this is my first post :) I hope people think it's a good one!

That having been said, though, this does look interesting. I see an influx of boosting sweepers incoming (and an absence of Togekiss and most Jirachi...).
Baton Pass would become much more viable, since crits are now gone. What would you do about Evasion? (before you say it doesn't exist, AcuPass Medicham.)

Moderator

This has been tried before both on PO and PS and then later dropped after it became apparent that they were not very popular. PS's version is called haxmons and is currently available under challenges. PO's version can be found here, although I am fairly certain it is no longer playable.

Boosting might be more prevalent, but at the same time, there's quite a few new "guaranteed-crit" moves like Leaf Blade, Night Slash, Shadow Claw, Air Cutter, and Slash. I think there's a good chance people would carry those somewhere on their teams, and they'd be the counter to statboosting.

...and I'm afraid I don't know what AcuPass Medicham is.

verbatim, I thought haxmons was quite a bit different than what I'm proposing here. People are paralyzed and crit all the time and toxic always misses and random amounts of sleep and full paralysis still exist... like hax all the time instead of never. Or am I thinking of something else?

Personally, I love the idea. I was even considering posting this, but decided against it because I figured it'd be like Clear Skies. I mean sure, it'd certainly be somewhat popular, but I don't think it would get enough use to be implemented.

Moderator

Scald and Discharge burn/para are the epitome of hax lol, and are some of the most annoying hax. And before you say that Serene Grace allows for moves with over 50% (is that the arbitrary threshold these days?) hax rate, it doesn't matter as a Serene Grace + hax moves with over 25% hax would be a ridiculous complex "unban."

As for the mechanics themselves... luigimario64, how do you plan on implementing this? In order for this to pick up interest, you'll need a way to play it, which will entail you running your own server and modifying the code yourself (or enlisting others if there is interest). Unless you have the time to implement the mechanics yourself, this isn't going to pick up any steam.

Since Acupressure involves luck (in picking which stat to raise) it would be banned.

Same with 'high chance for hax' secondary effects like the burn on Scald, as NixHex said. Indeed, the idea would be to make teambuilding and prediction/tactics during battle the only variables.

I've seen other suggestions for 'hax/luck-free' versions of Pokemon, ranging from simple "no crits or freezing" clauses, to bigger attempts, but nothing that changed what Paralysis, Confusion, and Sleep do to make them luck-free, or some of the other things in the original post. I've not seen one as comprehensively/completely luck-free, in other words. I admit that I probably don't have the time to implement the mechanics myself (I wouldn't even know how, so I'd have to figure it out first!). I just hadn't seen any satisfactory hax-free metagames around so I thought I'd propose my own and see what people thought. If someone else felt inclined to implement it, that would be amazing. If not, it could at least lead to an interesting discussion. [And I did confirm with DTC that this was the most appropriate subforum for that :) ]

So on the discussion note, I wonder if Paralysis would be as common as it is now if it only (drastically) reduces Speed. Also, would the new confusion mechanics make Confuse Ray etc. worth using? It would be awesome to try.

You cannot get rid of hax entirely unless you ban speed ties and ban moves with accuracy of less than 100%.

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As noted in the original post: moves with an accuracy of 90% or higher (and a few others) have their accuracy increased to 100%. All other moves are banned. So in this metagame, all moves would have an accuracy of 100%.

Speed ties are tricky to deal with but pretty rare. I suggested above that the lighter Pokemon go first in that case. That would solve it except when two of the same Pokemon are fighting. We could come up with rules like "the one who uses the weaker move goes first"... but there will always be the case of completely identical pokemon using the same move, and so that has to stay. But when does that happen? Probably never.

We've all been there. For example, having a fully boosted Sigilyph ready to sweep an entire person's team when all of a sudden, a critical ice beam shoots out of nowhere and kills your chances of winning...(Personal experience)

If this was implemented, I would definitely give this a shot, but I would miss all those 70% accuracy moves like focus blast...
(Or would that get bumped up to 100% as well? That would really shift the tiers...)

But uhh..what about items? Like Quick claw, King's Rock, etc....
Those items would have to be banned, right?

removal of crits and high powered inaccurate moves is a buff to stall.

A much better idea is a Battle RNG mode, where you can see future RNG frames. You and your opponent vie for certain "lucky" (and unlucky) frames and the person who navigates the frames best is the one who receives the hax.

OmegaDonut initially brought this up 2+ years ago, and afaik none of the simulators use the actual RNG the game does. Essentially you are doing a TAS vs another person capable of TAS. The mode would eliminate luck and would make the game much more strategic in a totally different direction.

Even if the simulator didn't use the exact RNG the game does (ie, Mersenne Twister based randomness rather than a 64bit LCRNG), just spitting out a list of future frames and an indicator of the would-be rand() result is all that is required.

removal of crits and high powered inaccurate moves is a buff to stall.

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These were my thoughts as well. The removal of high power moves basically invites stall to set up with literally no penalty - as it can simply recover off the damage. In addition, the removal of critical hits would just the last nail in offense's coffin. The premise of offense centers around risk vs reward. While there are undoubtedly many cases of frustrating, game-changing hax, the vast majority of matches prove the risk of power over accuracy is indeed worth the reward of victory. Otherwise, people wouldn't use those moves and the current meta wouldn't blatantly favor offense.

Well I agree it would favour stall, but I don't think a slow-paced metagame is in itself better or worse than the fast-paced one that exists now. The idea would be to encourage planning-to-win instead of slapping Focus Blast on and hoping-to-win ;)

Even so, I'm not sure it's as bad as you say, I don't think stall can set up with no penalty. For example, the new 100% crit Night Slash or Shadow Claw would probably be the end of a stalling Sigilyph, regardless of its six Cosmic Powers. And the new Confusion mechanics might help in forcing switches.

Plus, there's still lots of high-powered moves like Close Combat, Flare Blitz, Water Spout, Double-Edge, Brave Bird (and many more moves with negative side effects) to pick instead of Fire Blast or Hyrdo Pump.

I think we should create this metagame arround trying to retain the same game but removing every chance of hax involved.

Also, I would like to make some suggestions:

* Paralization: it should reduce the total damage output by 25% and the speed by 75% (simmilar to what Burn does to the Atk). This way we retain the same damage output but w/o the hax.

* Secondary Effects: Moves with secondary effects that have a non-100% chance of occuring have had their secondary effects removed and their damage output gets increased by the same (or maybe half, depending on the effect) chance of occuring. For example, Fire Punch gets a 10% damage increase instead a 10% burn chance, going from 75 dmg 82.5 (rounded to 85 I guess).
A) Status effects (Fire or Ice Punch for example): should provide an equal damage increase.
B) Stats drops, stats buffs, Confusion or Flinch: should provide half of its damage increase.
C) High Critical: the base damage should be increase by 6.25%.
D) Multi Hit moves: Always 3 times unless the pokemon has the ability skill link (in which case it goes to 5 times).

* Accuary:
A) Status moves with at last 90% accuary gets their accuary improved to 100%. Most notable: Toxic, Leech Seed, and Glare go to 100 accuary.
B) Status moves with less than 90% accuary are removed. Most notable: Sleep Powder, Stun Spore, Dark Void, Sweet Kiss, Will-o-Wisp and Lovely Kiss are removed.
C) All moves should have 100% accuary and every move that gets its accuary increased should have its damage decreased by the same %, rounded to the closes multiply of 5.
D) Low accuary 100% chance moves gets the secondary effects and accuary rules implemented. For example, Zap Cannon goes from 120 dmg 50 acc to 60 dmg 100 acc (accuary rule) and from 60 dmg to 120 dmg but loses the secondary effect (secondary effects rule). Same for Inferno, Dynamic Punch, etc.

Notable example: Rock Slide and Stone Edge. Rock Slide would go from 75/90 to 70/100 (accuary rule), and then from 70/100 to 80/100 (secondary effects rule). Stone Edge would go from 100/80 to 80/100 (accuary rule), and then from 80/100 to 85/100 (secondary effects rule). So Rock Slide would become a 80/100 Rock move with 10 PP and Stone Edge would become a 85/100 Rock move with 5 PP and a different distribution.

* Moves such as 1HKO, Metronome, Accupressure, Double Team and Sleep Talk should be removed.
* The Protect line should always fail when used consecutively.
* Hax items such as Brightpowder and King's Rock should be removed.
* Hax abilities such as Static, Cute Charm, Cursed Body, Flame Body, etc, should be removed.

This is a point I want to raise specifically regarding two pokemon; Jirachi and Togekiss. They have the Serene Grace Paraflinch combo which is widely denounced as promoting hax. But to me at least, I actually see these as being anti-hax. They are designed to do one thing, and that is to prevent the opponent attacking consistently and reliably. "Hax" to me implies luck and inopportune misfortune. Serene Grace has a 90% success rate and can be smelt from a mile away. That is the antithesis of hax.

I know a lot of people will probably disagree (and I disagree when I'm on the receiving end :D), but if it sparks some discussion then I'm happy.

Jirachi for example, can increase the PRZ chance on Thunder under Rain from 30 to 60. That means, 4 out of 10 games you would miss and 6 out of 10 you would get it right. 60% IS a luck based move. Is ALMOST as flipping a coin.

3 days ago a Jirachi used Thunder on me and got 4 PRZ out of 4 attacks.

Also, the Flinch rate goes to 60%, not 90%, I dont know where you got that number off. Also, a ParaFlinch state is 70%, not 90%.

If you use a 30% Flinch move against a paralized opponent under Serene Grance you should only get it off arround 3 each 4 times.

The last time I played a Jirachi he did that 9 times in a row, killing my pokemon in the process. Thats hax, not the antithesis of hax.

When I was referring to "paraflinching", I meant T-Wave + Flinching move, my apologies for not clearly stating that. I totally agree that moves like Thunder which get boosted are indeed hax.

I thought Serene Grace was 90%, in that 30% paralysis chance plus 60% flinch rate was 90%? Although paralysis is probably only ten I guess then. Even so, 70% is not that haxy, it's a considerable majority of times, though it still has a failure rate. My argument is why should that be eliminated from standard play? If people wish to pursue a strategy with a success rate as high as Focus Blast hitting, who are we to stop that? It's Risk vs Reward; if I go for T-Wave or Thunder on your switch to Garchomp or whatever, then I lose. If you stay in, I get rewarded. Why do we want to eliminate that?

I've realised that my post didn't hit this point, which is the one I want to make: if players wish to pursue risky strategies with high rewards, who are we to eliminate that and limit their options?

Also (and this is purely subjective), hax makes the game interesting for me. It's why I hardly ever play chess and love playing pokemon. If you're trying to stall, you don't know if you'll be ruined by a crit or not, and that's personally what keeps the game fresh and exciting for me. But that's totally subjective, so yea.

Creator of PS

This has been tried before both on PO and PS and then later dropped after it became apparent that they were not very popular. PS's version is called haxmons and is currently available under challenges. PO's version can be found here, although I am fairly certain it is no longer playable.

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lol, you know Haxmons was removed since it was confusing and it's not like anyone used it for anything except trolling users.

I thought Serene Grace was 90%, in that 30% paralysis chance plus 60% flinch rate was 90%? Although paralysis is probably only ten I guess then. Even so, 70% is not that haxy, it's a considerable majority of times, though it still has a failure rate. My argument is why should that be eliminated from standard play? If people wish to pursue a strategy with a success rate as high as Focus Blast hitting, who are we to stop that? It's Risk vs Reward; if I go for T-Wave or Thunder on your switch to Garchomp or whatever, then I lose. If you stay in, I get rewarded. Why do we want to eliminate that?

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Actually, paralysis is a 25% chance. And the chances don't stack, they multiply.

So a 75% chance of not getting paralyzed, times a 40% chance of not getting flinched, is a 30% chance of moving successfully.

My argument is why should that be eliminated from standard play? If people wish to pursue a strategy with a success rate as high as Focus Blast hitting, who are we to stop that? [...]if players wish to pursue risky strategies with high rewards, who are we to eliminate that and limit their options?

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Of course I would never suggest replacing the standard OU metagame with this, and players who enjoy things as they are will always have their chance to run risky strategies. This would be for those interested in seeing what Pokemon would be like completely free of luck.

chuavechito had some good ideas, particularly making Paralysis also reduce damage by 25% to mirror the 25% full paralysis rate it used to have. Increasing the power of moves that lost a secondary effect makes sense, and should help (very slightly) push things back towards favouring offence. On that note, maybe to further help disincentivize stall all damage should be multiplied by 1 instead of 0.925 (my original solution to the 85%-100% random damage multiplier).

But to reply to a few posts up there, the idea would be to completely remove all forms of chance/luck, even if they aren't "hax" in the sense it causes internet outrage when it happens. There's no distinction between a 6.25%, 10%, 30%, 70% chance, everything is 100% or 0%.

Well, Focus Blast itself is a show of how to promote hax, lol, you'll gonna fail almost the 1/3 of times, thus, most probably losing your Pokémon. And not talking of tactics that involves double stricke of Focus Blast. Anything with more of 1/5 chances to fail is actually hax or gimnicky, because you'll want to win at least the 50% of times, and you'll gonna play your chances more than one time, so, you'll don't reach the 50% win ratio if you're depending of hax tactics, most of the time, or you'll barely surpass it, when you'll most probably want a over 75% win ratio at the end.

Anyway, I'm feeling the idea too silly, I think the best way to handle a game "without luck" is actually by the metod of Kaphotics, if you know your numbers, then you can play around it, making it a lot more "mind game" and a lot less "luck game", you know you'll fail Focus Blast? Switch-out! And that sort of stuff.

Moderator

Anyway, I'm feeling the idea too silly, I think the best way to handle a game "without luck" is actually by the metod of Kaphotics, if you know your numbers, then you can play around it, making it a lot more "mind game" and a lot less "luck game", you know you'll fail Focus Blast? Switch-out! And that sort of stuff.

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Same here. That feels like the best way to implement a "no hax" metagame.

Having hax in the game just adds another set of skills to master. That is, calculating probabilities and making moves based on that (more important in doubles than singles). You can't actually predict that hax, but you can make the best move with having them in consideration, which is an important skill in pokémon. Sometimes, that doesn't help and maybe you'll lose for it, but sometimes it'll make you win too, so it evens out.
Maybe that sigilyph gets hit a lot when setting up, in that case, knowing how many cosmic powers to use to not let the chance of getting hit with a critical hit getting too high is important. Someone just mindlessly setting up without caring about hax is more likely to lose than someone that knows when it's enough. There is a 31/256=0,12109375 chance to get hit with a critical hit during the two turns you go from +4 to +6 and even higher if you also have to roost afterwards and whether it's worth it or not depends on the situation (that's just one example).